They reappeared in a much smaller clearing of trees that was cut off from the large circular clearing, away from where Chen or Sehun would be able to notice the sudden appearance of six figures in the darkness.

Although he was tired, Lay’s first instinct was to look over to Kai, and he was glad he did. He yanked him in just in time to keep his unconscious form from falling to the ground. The other members (other than Baekhyun, who was trying again to stop his head from spinning) quickly took notice and looked on with worry.

“Someone’s going to have to stay back and protect him,” Suho whispered.

“It’s gotta be me,” Xiumin said immediately, stepping forward and putting his arm under Kai’s and moving Kai’s bodyweight onto himself. “Suho, if you can collect enough water, I can freeze it into a shelter.”

The water-manipulator looked around the rain-soaked clearing and nodded.  Looked muddy, but it wouldn’t be difficult at all.

Lay looked at what he could see at the fight. Trails of white lightning and explosive balls of orange fire illuminated the night sky, and he could hear wind rushing and feel the vibrations of the earth as well. He noticed that the clearing was not entirely a clearing, but that the trees had been cleared for what looked like the start of some new building project that had been abandoned. All that had been built and all that remained was the steel girders.

“Here’s what I think should happen. What we have that Chen and Sehun don’t isn't only numbers, but the ability to transfer power. Baekhyun and Xiumin, I need some of your energy to reroute it to D.O. Tao, I want you to back up Chanyeol, and Suho should back up D.O. Baekhyun, you stay back with Xiumin and defend this area. This is going to be our rendezvous point. You get hurt, you come back here. Does that sound okay?”

The other four blinked in unison.

“…Yes?” Tao finally answered.

“Good.”

Tao immediately went to join Chanyeol while Lay joined hands with Baekhyun so he could begin siphoning power. Suho began collecting all of the water he could, spinning it into a large rope-like coil on the ground. As he laid the water down, Xiumin froze it in place, and the structure spiraled upward then the coil became tighter and tighter until it resembled an igloo. When it was finished, Xiumin unfroze a semi-circular area of the structure, and the chunk of ice fell out. Xiumin shuffled in and with Suho’s help, he pulled Kai in after him before once again exiting.

Upon exiting, he took a look at the scene before him. Baekhyun looked listless as Lay finished drawing from his power reserves, Suho was skating toward the fight at top speed across a film of water he was pushing out in front of himself; the lightning bolts that had been so quick before were slowing tremendously before the plasma was being dispersed, a tactic that Tao and Chanyeol must have invented, but one that would win no offensive points.

“Shelter’s ready,” Xiumin said, clapping a hand down on Baekhyun’s shoulder. “Take a nap and I’ll wake you up when I need you.”

Baekhyun gave something of a hurt look to Xiumin, but did as he was told without complaint. Unless a sarcastic-sounding “Yes, hyung” counted as a complaint.

Xiumin looked surprised and a little hurt himself at the snappy comment, meeting eyes with Lay as the younger took his hands and started draining power.

“Wouldn’t you feel the same if all of your friends were fighting for their lives and you couldn't use your powers to their full potential?” Lay whispered just loudly enough for Xiumin to hear. The ability to amplify their light into lasers was a natural right-of-passage that all of Baekhyun's family had mastered, but he had somehow never been able to, and not one of his bandmates knew why. The other eleven guys them had long ago unlocked their secondary abilities. “His powers as they are may or may not end up being useful. If they do, we could die without him here, but if they don't… Just remind him that we need him and he is important, okay?”

Lay didn’t drain as much power from Xiumin as he did from Baekhyun, and after two minutes he was good to go. Lay ran out to find D.O., and Xiumin rejoined Baekhyun and Kai.

Except Baekhyun was gone.

Chanyeol and D.O. were not in a good way, especially the former. That was the first thing Tao, Suho, and now Lay were noticing upon arriving back at the area. Chanyeol’s skin were severely burned in various small spots from lashes of lightning due to his lack of defensive capabilities, but Chen had also suffered a few more widespread but less severe from Chanyeol’s flames. As bad as they were though, Sehun was worse off than both of them combined. But he was fighting to the edge of his limits and giving D.O. a run for his money. Between Sehun’s concussion and being on the offensive, D.O.’s only option had been to go on the defensive until reinforcements arrived.

And that they had.

Lay had amassed the energy he’d collected into a basketball-sized, swirling mass, and he was running straight for D.O.

“LAY!” the target shouted, protecting the healer from an attack by Sehun as he approached from behind.

“Big package!” Lay shouted back. “Brace for it!”

If you’ve ever watched a light bulb during a massive power surge, on the edge of bursting from the influx of power being forced into it, that’s what D.O. may have reminded you of. His eyes glowed a brilliant light green for a couple of seconds when Lay hit him in the back with the mass of energy, screamed as it coursed through him. Suho distracted Sehun while D.O. took a few moments to recover.

“Ready,” he finally said, wiping away some drool from the corner of his mouth. Every inch of the fabric of his being ached, especially where Sehun’s attacks had landed, but his glare had gone from weary to determined. There was no more appropriate word than “ready”.

“What can I do to help?” a tired-sounding voice came from behind.

Lay’s heart dropped as he recognized the voice as Baekhyun’s, but D.O. replied before Lay could say a word.

“Perfect timing. Sehun has a concussion, and I think that if you could produce some weird light patterns, you might be able to shock his brain long enough for us to launch an attack.”

“He can’t, I just drained-“

“I can.” Baekhyun shot back.

“No time to argue. Lay, help Tao stop Chen from countering and tell Chanyeol to get over here.”

Lay shot one very worried look toward Baekhyun before hurrying to join Tao.

While Sehun’s attacks were easily able to dispel Suho’s, Suho had the advantage in sheer number, hardly putting any energy into most of the tendrils of water he was shooting out. Sehun was entirely distracted by them, barely able to keep up with Suho’s speed. He was flagging, and fast.

Suddenly, rapidly-flickering light put his already injured brain into overdrive, causing a fuzzy, tingling feeling of dread to build in his core. He instinctually stopped moving, fell to his knees, and shut his eyes for less than a second before realizing the defenseless predicament that left him in.

That was all the time D.O. and Suho needed.

Sehun tried to jump back to his feet only to realize that his ankles had been shackled to the earth beneath them. In that moment, shackles also slammed against his wrists and pulled him to the ground hard.

Earth and water swirled together violently, creating a thick muddy paste that entombed Sehun.

“Hurry up, Lay!” Tao shouted nervously.

“Hell no you don’t!” Chen shouted as he flung up an arm to attack D.O. and Suho.

The second Lay made contact with Tao, the latter immediately did what he did best. One pulse, and Chen was almost entirely frozen in space with his arm nearly poised to fire.

“CHANYEOL!” D.O. roared over the noise of the rushing water and soil.

Chanyeol grimaced as he forced himself to produce the flames that would harden the layers of the muddy mixture and prevent Sehun from leaving until they said he could. Two feet of fire-hardened, magic-infused mud would be like trying to break out of a concrete prison.

“Now for Chen,” D.O. growled, bloodthirsty.

“Can’t… hold…” Tao grunted upon realizing he’d completely tapped out Lay’s energy reserves.

D.O. managed to get crude wrist cuffs on Chen, but they proved to be no good once Tao’s power faltered. D.O. had no time to react to the sudden bolt of lightning he was faced with, and he took it square to the chest and crumpled to the ground.

“KYUNGSOO!” Suho and Chanyeol shouted, the latter doing so so loudly that his voice cracked.

Chen tried to hit the distracted two, but a flash of light followed by a butterfly kick to the sternum knocked his trajectory off-track.

“THE IS WRONG WITH YOU, CHEN!? SNAP OUT OF IT!!!”

Chen’s head spun for a moment when it contacted the ground, and then spun again as he was punched in the face by Baekhyun. When he realized what was happening, his blood-filled scowl was replaced by a grin.

“Big mistake.”

To his dismay, he didn’t have time to properly reprogram Baekhyun’s brain before Tao had tackled him off of Chen. The youngest scrambled to his feet, dragging Baekhyun along with him. Chen tried to send a lightning bolt after them as they fled, but Suho and Chanyeol didn’t allow it, enveloping him in a cloud of burning-hot steam and standing on guard cautiously as they listened to his screams.

“SUHO, GET D.O. AND LAY OUT OF HERE!” Tao shouted back through the mist. He had had to leave Lay’s barely conscious form alone in order to rescue Baekhyun. To whom he then shot, “Are you stupid, hyung!? If you touch him, he scrambles your brain!”

“Would you rather be fighting me, or have D.O. dead?” he spat back, anger at everything that had happened to him since their arrival compounding. “I’m gonna help Suho take those two back; you and Chanyeol kill that motherer.”

Tao was taken aback for a moment as Baekhyun’s harsh command to kill one of his best friends, but he didn’t speak out again. Suho arrived quickly with the unconscious D.O. and nearly unconscious Lay in tow, giving D.O. to Baekhyun to take care of.

“Let’s go.”

“Baekhyun-“

“Don’t,” he seethed at Xiumin upon hearing the disapproving tone in his voice. That shut him up immediately. The group got D.O. and Lay situated in the shelter and Suho quickly filled Xiumin in on the details while they place a hand each on Lay’s shoulders to donate energy to help him recuperate as well as heal D.O.’s injuries.

“I think the same technique we used to get Sehun will work on Chen,” he postulated.

“That’s no good,” Xiumin replied. “Chen needs to use up all of his power to go back to normal, right Lay?” He got a nod in response. “He knows better than to waste his power trying to break out of an earth prison. You need to do something else.”

Suho pondered for a few moments before a weak voice came from D.O.

“The steel… building…”

“D.O.!” Xiumin and Suho said in happy surprised. Lay beamed warmly.

“If Chanyeol can… melt the girders and Suho or Xiumin can cool the metal… I can trap him like I did Sehun…”

Baekhyun shook his head. “We don’t have enough power left between the eight of us for Chanyeol to melt steel, do we?”

The shelter was quiet for a moment.

“I think we have enough power to try,” Lay murmured. “Suho, how much do you need?”

“If Xiumin and I can work together, you can keep draining,” Suho said.

“It doesn’t take much power for me to cool water,” Xiumin said. He was clearly fatigued, being on his second energy draw, but he gave the go-ahead for Lay to keep draining.

“It won’t take me much to move it,” D.O. added. “It all depends on Chanyeol.”

Lay closed his eyes, calculating the amount of power flowing through himself. Suddenly, he felt another hand on his back.

“ me dry,” Baekhyun insisted.

“But-“

“But nothing. It’s okay. I can't use my powers offensively, and it’s not like that’s something I haven’t had time to get used to. I did something useful today, that only I could do, and that’s all I wanted. Just do it. And tell Chanyeol I said ‘Good luck’.”

Lay hesitated before tapping into Baekhyun’s power flow.

“Do it.”

“Take some but don’t ‘ him dry’,” D.O. said right as Lay began. “He’s gonna have to tell that to Chanyeol himself, because there’s no way Chen is going to let Chanyeol and I get away if he sees us. Baekhyun, here’s what I need you to do…”

Suho, Xiumin, Lay, and D.O., not wanting to waste a single iota of energy, chose to run back into the fray rather than skate, as they normally would have chosen to do. Suho, and Xiumin went to task helping Tao distract Chen while Lay transferred energy to the barely-standing Chanyeol behind an earthen wall put up by D.O., and explained to him what he would need to do with it.

“Maybe,” Chanyeol responded when asked whether or not the energy with which he was being provided would be enough. He flashed white teeth as he added, “But I’ll git ‘er done either way.”

“Damn right,” D.O. added, smiling with a rare cockiness. “Let’s roll.”

The three shot out from behind the barrier in what should have been plain sight of Chen, but what the offender didn’t realize was that on the exact opposite side of him, someone was dispersing the light coming from the direction of the three runners. As they reached their target inside of the building, Baekhyun went from crouching to prone, dispersing the brilliant glowing that came from Chanyeol melting the girders.

Lay kept his hands steady on Chanyeol’s shoulders even as he felt the last bits of power being siphoned from his body, and not long after he lost consciousness, Chanyeol fell next to him. D.O. had to unfortunately watch his bandmembers fall, unable to help him as more energy and power than he thought was being taken up on the metal.

Baekhyun also protected D.O. and the molten ball from sight on the return journey, the massive number of photons shooting from the glowing ball proving an extreme challenge.

“Can’t… ing…”

D.O. realized that Baekhyun must have reached his limit when Chen’s startled attention snapped to the sudden appearance of a brilliant white molten ball, but by that time it was too late anyway.

“NOW!” D.O. yelled as he shot out a string of the steel.

Chen tried to scream but choked as he inhaled supercooled water instead of air. A racing layer of it was swirling around and covering his form, preventing the steel from eating right through his flesh. He made one last desperate bid at attacking the two who were controlling the water stream, charging and then sending all of the lightning he could muster out in a beautifully terrifying stream of energy. Suho and Xiumin braced, that being all they could do as their power ran out and everything faded to black.

The energy was all successfully grounded by the steel line D.O. had trapped Chen in and drilled deep into the earth below it, and the only one of the ten people who’d started in that fight who was awake to see it gave the weakest of smiles before collapsing to the ground.